Production working on my Yamaha cp-30

[diegoff]

Hi, I just wanted to share with you a service I did myself to my Yamaha cp-30 electronic piano. It's from 1976, and works with hammer systems, just like a real piano, but hits sensors instead of strings. I bought it some months ago, and it needed a cleaning service. I tried to take it to a good technician, but, also very expensive, he had a lot of work in his hands (maybe). So, wtf, I'm technician, and I know how to work with electronics and equipment, so I dedicated time and love and did the work. It was a great experience, and I have to recognize that electronic instruments nowadays are almost plastic shit when speaking of their construction (they sound great in many cases). I took some pics of the process and uploaded some of them in my album here at MS. Maybe some of you are interested, or just curious, but I know that some musicians here have good synths and would like this:

http://www.mercuryserver.com/forums/album.php?albumid=410

[danielRR]

Re: working on my Yamaha cp-30

Very cool... nice work !

What does it sound like ?

[diegoff]

Re: working on my Yamaha cp-30

it has a unique sound, a mix of organ and rhodes. The lower notes are very fat, due to analog synthesis, a bit dirty. It has 2 groups of 4 voices: 3 kinds of "piano" (very far away from an acoustic piano) and harpsichord. You can combine wich sound you like in each voice, and mix them between the two. Plus you can detune each group of voices, so HERE is where you get a nice analog sound, kinda chorus. And it has a nice analog tremolo effect, where you can control speed and and deepness of modulation. I love it, its a big motherf*cker, like 105lbs. Great sounds if you process it with eqs, any distortion and reverb.

[danielRR]

Re: working on my Yamaha cp-30

Awesome! Have you used it in any tracks yet ?

[diegoff]

Re: working on my Yamaha cp-30

no, not yet. It's great for a classic house tune, those with happy chords, imo.
I'll try to record some bass notes, cause it has a deep sound.

[beau trager]

Re: working on my Yamaha cp-30

hey,

I just got one of these pianos too. I find though that the difference in sound between playing soft and playing hard is very big. as though playing with a medium velocity sounds great and playing even a little bit harder sounds like it's clipping. Could this be an issue with the piano or do I really just need to be that sensitive about my playing.

oh and here is a recording I did with it. It's super noisy because I had one of the outputs running to a marshall guitar amp which doesn't really agree with the keyboard.

http://soundcloud.com/lukas-electric/the-defeater

[diegoff]

Re: working on my Yamaha cp-30

thereīs a metal piece that stops the movement of the hammers. That piece has some felt attached to it so the feeling of pushing the keys is near to a piano feeling. If that felt is old and deformed, the hammers could go farther, hitting the sensors stronger and making that clipping sound. You can change the felt, sticking it with some glue. try to replace it with one of the same thikness. And if you open the instrument, try blowing some air against the sensors to clean them from dust.
Other thing you can try is to calibrate the integrated circuits (in the tech manual is explained how), but in my opinion, cleaning it and changing the felts where the hammers rest would work. Good luck!

[beau trager]

Re: working on my Yamaha cp-30

which felts do you mean or all of them. the felts in picture one look pretty worn out, especially near the middle of the keyboard. The others are too hard too see unless I really start taking things apart.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6110/6284057597_a953f5f931_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6110/6284880080_66bea4281f_z.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6109/6284059051_ae76974934_z.jpg

[diegoff]

Re: working on my Yamaha cp-30

I was saying the felts in the pics 2 and 3 you posted. The ones in the 1st pic are hard to remove and hard to replace.In your pics, the felts look like in great mint condition (you'll know better, I can't appreciate that much from the pics), and I can't listen the clipping you refer to in the audio you uploaded. Here I attach a link to the service manual that I uploaded. It's not the owners manual, it's the one for maintenance and tech service, maybe you find something about that clipping. Try cleaning it. It's not very difficult to do it. Only removing some screws, and you don't need to touch the electronics (in the manual you have it specified step by step). I had a problem with two keys that sounded too low and dark, and after cleaning it they went ok.

here's the link: http://www.mediafire.com/?887nd5yo4cwx8qd

let me know anything else I can help. Best way to solve out the problem is take it to a technician, but it's too expensive, and no so difficult in these kind of instruments.